In a wireless ad hoc network, the nodes of the network can be equipped with wireless communications transceivers. Some of the nodes may be capable of network routing functions (“routers”) and the others may be merely sources or destinations for data traffic (“endpoints”). The nodes can execute a set of algorithms, and perform a set of networking protocols, that enable the nodes to find each other, determine paths through the network for data traffic from source to destination(s) and to detect and repair ruptures in the network as nodes fail, as battery power changes, as communications path characteristics change over time, and so forth.
One known subset of ad-hoc networks employs ultra-wideband (UWB) radios. UWB radios employ very short RF bursts in order to convey digital information. These bursts are very accurately clocked so that both the sending radio and the receiving radio(s) agree on when a burst is going to be sent. At that moment, the sending radio (the transmitter, Tx) will activate its transmitter in order to send an RF burst. At the same moment, the receiver(s), Rx, will activate their receivers so that they will be able to receive the burst that Tx is sending.
Thus, UWB radios have a distinctive form of “channel access” in which a transmitter has a schedule of very precise times at which it will transmit. The receivers need to know this schedule in order to be able to receive these transmissions. Schedules may need to be changed or revised to accommodate traffic flow over the network, or other constraints such as signal interruptions or radio failures.
UWB radio technology is well known, as are methods for synchronizing the radios in a network, i.e., how the various radios of the network come to agree on the precise shared timing of the schedule and set their internal clocks accordingly. What is needed are methods and systems to give the radios new time schedules, as the network is operating, in response to traffic flow and/or events affecting traffic flows.